Anna Liebigerová

"Once we were just coming back from a shelter and our house was broken, a bomb had fallen near it. And so they freed up some offices for us in the prison. That was one room always and there were bunk beds, so we kind of lived in that one room. Well, it was bad, because at the end of the war especially the guards who had been somehow in league with the Germans , suddenly played great patriots. They put a barrier across the road. Now normal, ordinary people, mothers with small children said, 'We are Germans, what will happen to us now?' and so they were running down Klatovská Street, which led to Klatovy. They were running to go to Germany, and they were all dragged to the prison and beaten there. It was terrible there. Daddy always came in completely devastated by what these people could do. He was such a sensitive person, it hurt him so much, like they were beating him. And Mum says, 'Please, and you don't even...?' Dad said he wouldn't touch anybody, and if she wanted him to beat up some woman with a kid? She told him no, but he could just shove somebody. And my father said he wouldn't even shove anyone."

"And so once, too, it was always the sirens, the tram stopped, and, well, go wherever you want. So that's what happened to me once. The sirens went off, the tram stopped, well, a little girl in second class with a briefcase, nobody noticed her. So she got into the building behind the door, and I was shaking because there were bombs falling around me, and they were fragmentation bombs and incendiary bombs, and I saw them burning, I was shaking. It's a good thing my parents were model Catholics and taught us to pray. I was huddled there in a corner praying and praying and it turned out well. I finally got saved, but then they signalled the end of it again. They weren't allowed to come out right away because they still had the so-called ground shooters. And whoever ran out - well, don't run out of a burning building - they shot him down with machine guns. If somebody came out, they killed him right away. But I knew I wasn't allowed to do that yet, only after they'd signal the end and the planes had left. So that was the most powerful experience I had. And then I got out and went to school. It was under the Pilsen theatre and the school was fine."